


Bent

by azarias



Series: Shameboners of James McGraw [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Aftercare, Caning, Consensual Kink, Crying, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Light Bondage, M/M, Masochism, Pain, Sadism, Shame, references past non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-16 02:26:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10561844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azarias/pseuds/azarias
Summary: In a warm room in London, James tells Thomas about the events on theExeter.Thomas applies what he learns.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [ Csoru](http://archiveofourown.org/users/csoru/pseuds/csoru) for being my id-beta, second-guess-checker, and general enabler. Thanks as well to [Rahne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetrickisnotminding) for championing heresy over blasphemy.

Thomas played chess to watch James's hands. 

As ever, they were in motion, long fingers caressing the tops of the carved wooden pieces or rubbing at the edge of his jaw while he thought his strategy through. But his hands were never hesitant. When James picked up a piece, it was only to set it down with finality in its next position. If James ever thought twice about a move once committed, he gave no sign of it.

Here in Thomas's bedroom, late at night beside the fire, the state of the board was grim. That Thomas would lose this round was evident already, absent divine intervention. But Thomas did not play chess to win at chess.

"If we succeed, you know, your name will be attached to it." Thomas spoke, watching James, and James watched the board. Thomas's hand drifted between knight and rook, still deciding, though it scarcely mattered. "Lieutenant James McGraw, whose vision has brought peace to the Bahamas and prosperity to Nassau town."

James snorted. "I have fought _your_ vision," he said drily, "every step of the way."

The rook. It ticked against the board, moving back to Thomas's side to guard his king against a strike. 

James looked delighted at the move.

"You have," Thomas conceded easily. "And that is why I am more confident now than ever that we'll prevail. Any plan that can win over your disapproval and stand up to your skepticism should find Parliament a refreshing holiday."

He sat back comfortably in his chair, watching the firelight play over James's face. Across the small chess table James ran a thumb over his lips, then pressed the edge of it between them, up against his teeth. It wasn't a nervous mannerism, though in another man it would have been. James simply tended to lose himself in thought, and in the midst of it he'd forget where his body was. Or else he liked to have something in his mouth, an equally endearing thought.

"Perhaps not 'Lieutenant' for much longer," Thomas mused, quietly pleased. "You are already a man much spoken of at the Admiralty. A great victory like that, in politics if not in battle, should be worth a captaincy, don't you think?"

"You either overestimate or underestimate the worth of the Captain's List," James told him, not looking up from the board. "I've commanded ships before, and God and wartime willing I will again, but being made a captain takes more than mere accomplishment."

With his typical determination, James went from thought to action in an eyeblink, from his distant, abstracted expression to leaning forward over the board, moving a pawn — a pawn! — Thomas had not managed to capture forward a single square. It opened up a path for his bishop _and_ his knight, a possibility Thomas had not even seen. 

"Check," he said, and sat back, his hands laced together in his lap.

Thomas frowned at the board, tracing moves. He'd studied the game, but had never learned the knack. Most rounds he stayed on the defensive, acquitting himself well enough that his opponent had to work for victory, but found no clear path to a victory of his own. From time to time he would remember a gambit, some novelty the masters Father'd hired had taught him, and would eek out a win. 

James never lost to the same trick twice.

"Mate in … three?" Thomas ventured.

James said, "Four," then paused. "No, three, you're right, I missed that one."

Thomas ceremoniously tipped his king, then began setting up for another round.

"Certainly you've made a number of the captains you've sailed with out to be accomplished," Thomas commented as he opened with a pawn. James immediately countered. Since their first few games together had made their disparate skill levels plain, James always claimed black. 

"There's Admiral Hennessey, of whom you speak with such admiration, and Captain Turnston, whose sailing skills you've praised to me, though I haven't the knowledge to appreciate them as they deserve. And — Captain Stanhope, was it? The one who saw you made lieutenant."

James had spoken much about Stanhope, in fact, and said little. It had taken Thomas some time to note the difference, and now he wondered. Praise, but vague praise, no specific act of seamanship James sought to memorialize. Not like Turnston masterfully rounding the Horn, nor Hennessey's implacable courage in battle. Why did Stanhope loom so large in James's memories?

With a few glasses of port running through him, and the fire warm and one who loved him close, perhaps James could be brought to say more.

As always, James's eyes were on the board. As expected, he said nothing. Thomas made a few moves, more or less at random; sometimes acting without a plan would confuse James into thinking Thomas had a brilliant one.

"Tell me more about Captain Stanhope," Thomas asked, not loudly. He had no wish to distract James from the game-table, for just now the game was his ally. Give James a puzzle to focus on, and he would sometimes … forget, little pieces of himself. His wariness. Even around Thomas, he was still so wary, when Thomas had given to him every means to destroy Thomas at need.

"He's a good man," James said, advancing slowly with his pawns while his king stayed well-defended. 

That was odd. Thomas would have expected something more aggressive by now.

"Surely you don't believe you owe your lieutenancy to him?" Thomas ventured. "I assure you, my dear, I know little of ship-handling, but a great deal about whose names are spoken in Whitehall. Even men who are … less than fond of you believe you to be worth your salt at sea." 

Those men thought, in particular, that _at sea_ was where men like James ought to stay. Made officers, if by necessity, and given command of thankless but important tasks, but not spoken of as gentlemen and welcomed in among their betters. Fools. As if James were not the better of every man jack of them, and ten times the worth of the sort of coward whose only goal in life was to warm his father's seat in Lords and to vote just as the old man had, risking nothing.

Thomas could be grateful to Admiral Hennessey, who had seen to it that James was given the chance to shine, but every rank and honor James owned now, he had earned with his own two hands. 

"No," James said finally, as he made a weak response to a deep strike by Thomas's bishop. His tongue darted out, licking his lip and leaving Thomas fascinated. "No, Captain Stanhope was a fair man. He wouldn't have recommended me for lieutenant if I'd not done well in my exams."

Thomas touched a finger to the squat cross atop his king and twirled it gently on its base. Waiting.

"He … kept confidence for me. I made a mistake. A severe one. He let it go unpunished and unspoken." 

James's voice was bland, uncharacteristically so. Not the polite, controlled tones he resorted to when speaking to a stranger or a gentleman he disliked. Those had fierce feelings roiling just beneath the surface, if only you knew James well enough to hear. This was a complete absence of emotion, as if all feeling had been banished from the subject. That was not the James that Thomas knew, who felt everything so deeply Thomas sometimes worried he would bleed out from the stab wounds those feelings left.

"A — mistake?" Thomas asked, honest bafflement in his voice. He leaned forward, abandoning the game, touching the back of James's hand with the fingers of his own. "I'm sorry, love, but that makes no sense. I know you despise preferential treatment, or even the seeming of it. I can't imagine a _mistake_ you would have made so severe that your captain would have to cover for it, yet still pass you fairly for lieutenant."

James was looking at their hands, his still for once, Thomas's fingers rubbing little circles over their backs. A horrible thought occurred to Thomas. How often James had spoken of the dangers of the sea —

"Did someone die?" Thomas asked, as gently as he dared. Too gentle, and James would hear pity in it, and then he'd take it badly. "From a mistake you made?"

"No," James said immediately, his eyes glancing up, then quickly down again. His face was unreadable. His body tensed with inner conflict.

Almost Thomas was sorry he had asked, for surely their pleasant evening was at an end. Thomas had hoped they might go to bed together and play a different sort of game before they slept — he'd thought of phrasing it, teasingly, as a consequence of his losses, and to insist on a thorough buggering by James to pay off his 'debt' — but that hope seemed vain and presumptive now. He'd upset his lover, and so Thomas must see it set to rights.

Thomas opened his mouth to make a start at apology, but James spoke first. And James kept speaking, unprompted by Thomas, for half an hour.

Once, Thomas got up and poured a cup of water from the pitcher, bringing it back to James. James took it and wet his throat with it, and in the pause Thomas hesitated, wondering if he might be allowed to crouch at James's feet, to put his hands on James's knees. No. Best not to stay that close, if James hadn't invited him. Best not to look as if he placed himself between James and the door. Thomas retook his seat.

James told him about Stanhope, about the beating James had earned. About the exquisite care Stanhope had taken to make it hurt, and to force James to say words that would humiliate himself.

How James's body had reacted to the humiliation and the pain. To the man he was in awe of standing behind him, unstoppable in his wrath.

How Stanhope had touched him.

"And so," James said at the end of it, his eyes fixed on his empty water-cup, "you see that I owe him a very great debt. When I accepted, later, that I had not been so adept at hiding — that he could not have failed to see — when I realized that his parting words were an attempt to — to _comfort_ me —"

 _It happens to all of us, lad,_ still burned into his memory after years. He'd recited it in what Thomas imagined was Stanhope's voice, lower than James's own and cheerful. 

Those did not sound, to Thomas, like the words of a man offering _comfort_. 

They sounded like the words of a man, a coward, a base, vile _bastard_ who would abuse for his own satisfaction a young man who was utterly in his power, and then walk away as if he were not to blame.

Oh. He was growing angry. Thomas shunted the feeling aside. Growing up in Father's house, one learned that anger was not a path to victory. He would deal with himself later. James was speaking.

"He could have ruined me," James concluded. "Thrown me out at the first port. Not hanged me — I hadn't — not that he knew — but been the end of me all the same. Hennessey wouldn't have stopped him. Not if he knew what it was I found _appealing_." 

He was speaking too fast, his voice no longer absent emotion, but overflowing with it, ideas overlapping and words running together in a desperate bid to stay ahead of the wave. His tongue darted back and forth across the edges of his lips, as if despite the water they were dry.

Unable any longer to restrain himself, Thomas leaned across the chessboard and took James's wrist in hand. Chessmen toppled where his arm brushed them, falling like unmourned soldiers in some forgotten foreign battle.

James drew back from him, startled, as if he had forgotten Thomas was there. He met Thomas's eyes and he relaxed, not his body but at least his hand, which turned over on his knee so that his palm was touching Thomas's. He was sweating.

"My dear," Thomas said, considering his words with care. Once he began speaking, he would not be able to change his mind. James would catch his hesitation.

Thomas licked his lips and committed to his move.

"Forgive me, my dear, but from your description, your Captain Stanhope did not seem like a man unaffected."

"Pardon?" James sounded baffled. 

That was at least a change.

"I mean that you've described _your_ reaction." In great detail, Jesus help Thomas's fevered mind. There'd even been an offhanded mention that at eighteen, men had called James _pretty_. With milk-white skin and cherry red locks, his bare ass presented on a table like the roast at a feast. Rocking his hips in arousal, even as he hated himself for what he felt.

James hated so much about himself that he'd been told he ought. Fuck every man and woman who'd taught him the mere existence of James McGraw was shameful. Fuck every priest and every captain and every harpy fishwife who'd told him he had to hide his nature, not merely for his own protection but to save them from seeing his sin.

God did not call such things sinful. It was in the holy Book: to cleave to the one God had made for you, to love others as your own flesh, to trust the Lord's wisdom in the making of you. Only men had doubted and perverted those words; said that man's very _nature_ was sinful. As if sin were not something that came into man from the outside, corruption of God's perfect plan. 

More than once, Thomas had been called a heretic for such thoughts, though the accusations had never gone beyond his parlor. Fair enough, for he considered the men and women who held those beliefs blasphemers against the holy name.

He continued, though James would not meet his eyes, "But you've also told me what your captain said and did, and, James, does that not sound to you like a man who was fighting with his own cock? Red-faced, panting, the _way_ he touched you — 

"If I described any other man to you, and told you it was because he had a lovely boy spreading his legs in front of him, what would you think?"

He paused a moment, hoping that his words had weight. "I think you owe him far less than you think you do."

James shook his head. "Stanhope's no sod, the man loves his wife."

"Does he, now?" Thomas asked, an inveterate sodomite whose beloved wife slept down the hall.

James had the grace to look abashed. Not enough to concede the argument, though. "No, Thomas. That's — you're trying to shield me by casting aspersions on a good man. There were half a dozen snotties on that cruise, all of them younger than me. None of them were — the captain did not interfere with them."

"No," Thomas murmured, "only with you."

"Even _if_ he were," James said, his tone rising. "If he had a boy in every port and was the terror of his footmen. It would still not …" His eyes were closed, his teeth gritted as if to bear a great pain. His heartbeat fluttered frantically in his wrist. "Thomas, you didn't see what I _did_."

Suddenly his eyes snapped open, darted past Thomas to the door. He drew in a shuddering breath. He drew back his hand, out of Thomas's grasp. 

"I should go," he said. "I — good night, my lord."

To hell with caution. There were some things Thomas could not allow.

Thomas lunged from his chair, crossing the short distance between them and ending up on his knees between James's boots, his arms across James's thighs. Those thighs were thick with muscle and shaking with tension. All of James's powerful body seemed coiled like a snake, ready to strike. It would be barely an exertion, for James to knock him aside and escape through the door before Thomas could scramble to his feet.

James would not.

James stared at him, wide-eyed. 

Thomas said, "I think it doesn't matter which one of us is right." 

He said, "I think that, for the first time, you've told me about something that you enjoy, and that deserves a celebration."

He took a breath and prayed God that he was right, about James if not his old bugger of a captain, else his next move would be difficult to repair.

"I think … you should take off all your clothes, Lieutenant, and bend yourself across my writing-desk."

Once, in this very bedroom, James had told him that Thomas could have anything in the world he wanted, _Only take that beseeching look to Westminster and you'll have all the Lords and Commons eating from your hand._ Miranda more than once had told him something similar, but she usually described it as, _A spaniel puppy that has widdled on the floor, and wants to be given a treat instead of a beating._ Both lover and wife, Thomas had noted, went on to do as Thomas had asked them to, after they finished going on about his face.

As he knelt in front of James, his expression as open and as pleading as he could make it, Thomas only hoped it had not been a coincidence. 

James was so very still.

After far too long a pause, in which every disaster ran itself through Thomas's mind, James said, "Why?"

"I —" hadn't anticipated that question. 

He swallowed and began again. "Because if I know you, love, what truly horrifies you is not that you took what was given to you, but that you wanted _more_. And I want to give more to you."

So afraid to ask for what he wanted. So afraid to _want_.

Thomas squeezed James's thighs, as if through strength alone he could will the man to _hear_. "James, you insist that I'm a good man, but even you can't think me such a saint that the thought of a gorgeous man writhing underneath me does not appeal."

That shadowed green gaze dropped, as it always did when Thomas told him he was beautiful. You would think the man would be used to it by now, going through life looking as he did.

"Would you like it?" Thomas asked softly. "If I had you there before me, and I took my belt to you? If I beat you until your cock stood at attention and tears ran from your eyes?"

If he had overplayed, if he had read James's story wrong and the memory was purely pain, real disgust at what had been done to him untempered by desire … how could Thomas even begin to rectify his mistake?

This time when James stood, Thomas did not fight him.

"I should like it," James said, with Thomas there at his feet, "if you told me it was for discipline."

*

Thomas's writing-desk stood in the middle of the room, between the fireplace and his bed. It was smaller than the great barge that sat in his study, solid oak and shabby. Too old and unfashionable for the better parts of the house, but everything in Thomas's bedroom was there because he liked it.

Everything.

James stood by the desk, head bowed, his bare back limned in firelight. That tension was still in him, nervous energy shivering just beneath his skin. But he stood still, and quiet, as Thomas lit the lamps. Fire was not enough, not for this.

The room better-lit, Thomas stood apart, watching James. In profile his face was still, like marble, but if this was sculpture, the subject was a saint awaiting martyrdom. Stoic. Accepting and sad.

 _Sebastian,_ Thomas thought. Thomas said, "James."

He held out his hands, the cane in one, the belt in the other.

It had been years since a lover had asked Thomas to play the caning-master. A little less time since he had asked for it himself. He'd chosen from his dressing room the lightest cane and broadest belt, and here in James's sight he tried to be entirely confident.

James turned to him, eyes half-lidded, and Thomas wasn't certain he truly saw the tools. He nodded approval, as he would have done no matter what Thomas offered him. Then he turned back to the desk and rested his palms flat on it, his back bowed. Apprehension tugged at Thomas as he realized he had nearly been outplayed.

He hadn't won the argument. James was still fighting to prove a point.

To prove that he was — was diseased and wrong. Twisted, somehow. Malformed beneath his exquisite surface, because something that had been done to him without his asking years before had left its mark on him. He could no longer hate himself purely for the fact that he loved men, or else he must condemn Thomas, too. Instead, he reached for this to prosecute his case: that a touch of pain excited him, that a stern figure of authority might awaken hunger in him.

Such a small thing, to weigh so heavy on such a man.

"Lay yourself down," Thomas said, because words would not be what won this fight. "Show me what you showed him." 

A catch in his breath, though from what emotion Thomas could not discern, and James draped himself across the desk, his hands curled around its farther edge. His forehead was pressed to the dark wood, and as Thomas watched he shifted, learning it could take his weight. His bare feet found firm purchase in the Turkish rug beneath and his thighs flexed, lifting his ass high, luscious and ripe.

Thomas's mouth watered. He fingered open the top buttons of his vest, needing more room to breathe. Then he swallowed and pulled himself into motion, else he would simply stand there transfixed. Marvellous were the works of God, and James no less a wonder than the mountains or the sea.

Because he could, he touched James, his hand wandering over one buttock and up the man's side, to brush his sailor's queue aside and measure the broad span of James's shoulders. The belt, he'd tossed into a chair, the one James had sat in. Chessmen lay scattered on the table and the floor, forgotten by the fire. The cane was in his right hand, ticking from time to time against the desk as he explored.

Beneath his touch, James's body thrummed like a harpsichord wire, waiting for a skilled hand to draw music from it. 

He told James, "I have conditions. If it becomes too much, or if I truly injure you, you will tell me to stop. And conversely, if there is something that you want, or that you want more of, you will ask for it." His fingertips traced James's spine, pressing into each divot where the muscles met. "Do you understand, Lieutenant?"

Quietly, his voice caught between desk and body, James answered, "Yes, sir."

Thomas leaned over James, his hand roaming over that perfect ass, unapologetically possessive. He pressed against James's hip, bent until his lips nearly touched James's ear. 

"Lieutenant, remember where you are," he said, almost a whisper, but so close that James could not fail to hear. His fingers dug into the thick flesh of James's ass, ruthlessly digging into nerves. 

Thomas purred, "It's 'yes, _my lord_.'"

Something very like a sob came from James's throat, and his hips pushed back against Thomas, against his hand. 

And he said, "Yes, my lord."

Thomas unbent, stepped back, and brought the cane down across James's ass, etching a line of pain where his hand had been.

He could _see_ James's body pull tight, his nervous energy suddenly given direction, drawing inward. His ass quivered with the blow — and again, with the second, for Thomas did not hesitate to strike. In the lamplight, two angry lines stood out on that pale skin. What a lovely color. 

After a moment, Thomas brought the flat of his empty left hand down hard on James's ass. His palm stung, but the feeling of heat on James's skin was worth a little pain, and he slapped again on the other side. The _crack_ of flesh-on-flesh was loud in the silent room. Now the outline of his hand bloomed red on either cheek of James's ass, cut into rough thirds by the two lines.

Much better.

Throughout, James had remained silent. Thomas wasn't surprised. He was no boy, to cry out at the first taste of rough treatment; James was a man accustomed to hardship. But being able to bear pain was not the same as being unable to feel it. Thomas could hear him breathing, shallow and quick. His ass tensed beneath Thomas's hand, bracing for the next blow.

"How many shall it be, Lieutenant?" Thomas asked casually. He pressed hard against the welt and was rewarded by a tic in James's cheek. "How many strokes do you require for proper discipline?"

"It was … twenty. My lord." James sounded utterly miserable, asking for a number. 

Thomas nodded. "Sounds brilliant. We'll take it from the top. The count, if you please."

They fell into a rhythm quickly, Thomas striking, James counting. All James's ass and thighs were fair game and the cane found new flesh each time. James jerked, and shuddered, and sometimes when Thomas paused to caress his skin with the cane's tip his breath sounded like he might choke.

His voice broke on the sixteenth.

Thomas stopped, his arm drawn back for the seventeenth blow dropping to his side. "Enough?" he asked.

His own breathing was harsh, far more than the effort he'd expended was worth. His wrist tingled, the way it did when he fenced some amateur who thought the point was to slap at his blade rather than score a touch on him. Irritation, but not a warning of coming failure. He knew the strength of his own arms.

He knew, too, the strength of James's resolve.

James shook his head. There was — his hips moved, more than a tremor. Up and down, a rhythm. Halting, unsteady, the body's reaction being fought by the mind. His knuckles were white, strong hands gripping the desk until Thomas could hear the wood groan. 

Blood pounded in Thomas's ears. Flowed into his cock. He swelled with it, with the sight and sound of James — suffering, and needing, all at once. He could gorge himself on this.

He raised the cane again and brought it down, just above James's hole. Hard, harder than he had before.

" _Seventeen_ ," James hissed out, his voice raw.

Thomas said, "You would tell me to stop. I told you, you must tell me if you need to stop —"

"Eighteen," stuttering out between breaths that were almost sobs. Was it the cane that hurt him so, or the struggle to hold himself back?

Thomas hit him again, "Nineteen, _twenty_ ," and _again_ , and James did not count it, though it was twenty-one, more than they had agreed. 

"Tell me to stop, James," Thomas demanded. He brought the cane down again, across James's thighs, and there was a sharp sound like a bitten scream but no _words_. Again, and he could see the marks he'd leave on James's skin, could see his body jerk with every blow —

" _God damn you,_ I said tell me to _stop_." 

_Again —_

"Stop! Thomas, stop — please —"

The cane landed on the carpet, tip then top. _Thunk-thunk_. Thomas stood over James, hands flat on his own thighs, breathing hard. James hid his face in his crossed arms. Welts and bruises rose on his ass. But his hips —

His hips quivering. His body wanting.

Thomas walked away, to the bedside table and the oil he'd kept there habitually since James had first become his — habit.

On the desktop, soundlessly, James shook. Thomas thought, _He's crying_.

It was a distant, wondering observation. He had never seen James cry. Never truly, he suspected, seen him rage.

Thomas was a natural philosopher finding the nest of a most uncommon bird. Or a fish, one that lived in dark waters, with innumerable teeth. He wanted, almost, to have James painted like this, preserved in a fashion he could study at length. 

He rounded the desk again. Beneath Thomas's hand, James boiled. Inflamed and sore already from Thomas's abuse, and it would hurt more with time. That James would bruise was not in question. He'd needed laudanum, he'd said, when his captain had finished with him. Thomas liked to think he had acquitted himself at least as well as that old man. To be gentle in chastisement, to use the cane for a teasing edge of pain like teeth in a kiss, was more Thomas's taste. But here, now, was not only about Thomas. 

"Spread your legs, Lieutenant," Thomas commanded.

James spread his legs. But in a voice muffled by snot and his own arms, James said, "Don't." He trembled.

Thomas touched the inside of his thigh.

"Do you want me to stop, James?" He slid his hand up. Up. "Tell me to stop."

Here James's skin was soft, startlingly so. It was a wonder to find these tender places on James's body, no matter how many times Thomas explored. Some day he would have a map in his head so detailed that his eyes could be plucked out like Lear's and he would still know James by touch, down to the smallest part of him.

His fingertips found the crease where thigh joined body. He had not struck at James here. This heat was entirely James's own.

" _Tell_ me to stop."

James said nothing. Thomas curled his fingers, his arched knuckles finding yet more skin, incredibly soft, vulnerable. He turned his hand, let James's balls settle in his palm. James moaned, a low, desperate noise, pleasure and pain indistinguishable. He was achingly hard. 

This was what had frightened James all those years ago: how his body had responded with sexual hunger to stimulus that, he thought, oughtn't have been erotic. There was something wrong with him, an abscess septic and stinking on his very soul. Bad enough that he was a sodomite, all his appetites turned away from women and toward his own sex. This was surely some further perversion that even his own wretched kind would find unnatural.

It was frightening, how easily Thomas could follow James's thoughts. Simply assume the worst about every human need, and there you were. James had such unwavering confidence in his opinions, his arguments, his military expertise. And such suffocating shame about his body's urges, about who and how he loved, about just what diverse sensations could turn his prick hard. Any man who insulted him half as much, James would beat near to death, but James had sat there in his chair by the fire and described himself as the lowest, crawling thing.

Thomas reached for the glass bottle and poured oil into his palm, then reached between James's legs again and wrapped his hand around the beautiful cock that caused the man such shame. James jerked and gasped, for the oil was cool and Thomas had wasted no time warming it. He worked it into the shaft with quick, rough strokes, and held James's hip with an iron hand to keep him from pulling away. James moaned, a hopeless, heart-wrenching sound, and hid his face in the curve of his arm. 

When his cock was slicked all around and his balls likewise coated, Thomas relented and left off between James's legs. He wiped his hand on James's ass, the excess oil glimmering on the bright red skin. Beneath him James's hips shook, directionless, wanting to drag his cock against the hand that had abandoned him.

With his dry hand Thomas grabbed James by his sailor's queue. It was just long enough to wrap once around his hand. Pulled, and James flowed off the desk, fell against gravity up and back into Thomas's arms, pressing full against Thomas's front.

He would have oil stains all over his tan breeches, a trial for his valet. Hardly the worst thing Peterson had ever had to clean.

He ground his still-clothed erection against James's ass, the difference in their heights pressing his cock just where his blows had fallen hardest, where the bruises would be darkest in the morning light.

"What do you feel?" he breathed into James's ear. "Do you feel that?" 

Ruthlessly, he took James's erection in hand again and rubbed his thumb in circles around the head of James's cock, no more gently than he'd rubbed the welts on his ass. He pushed the foreskin back, let the edge of his nail scrape against that most sensitive flesh now revealed. James's back arched against him, driving James's abused ass harder against Thomas, seeking more contact, not less. James's hand clutched the back of Thomas's head, pulling him close. No presence of mind left to push Thomas away, as his shame and guilt would tell him that he ought.

" _You_ did that to me. Hurting you. Pleasing you. Watching you. The sound of you gasping, your body begging for a fuck when you can't find the words …"

Thomas pressed his mouth hard into the juncture of James's neck and shoulder. Pressed the heel of his hand against James's pelvis, urging him to press back, to rub himself shamelessly against Thomas's trapped cock.

Vehemently, venomously, through clenched teeth, " _Anything_ that is in you that is foul is in me, too. Those parts of yourself that you hate, they are _mine_. There is _nothing_ about you I'm afraid to see, James. God _made you_ for me." 

James sobbed heedlessly into the air. His hips jerked to no avail, caught between Thomas's body and Thomas's hand. Thomas was in no mood to let him go.

Thomas pressed a bruising kiss to his neck. Drew back only enough to speak. To growl, against James's pounding pulse. "What do you _want_ , Lieutenant?"

In his arms, James was a solid wall of muscle, a warrior from a Grecian vase, fearless and battle-forged. But James's head lolled against Thomas's shoulder. James's body moved as he directed it. On _this_ field of battle, Thomas was the conqueror, James his most beloved captive. 

James swallowed heavily, something thick in his throat.

"The belt. I would — like the belt." His voice was tear-rough but soft, dreamlike.

Thomas brushed his lips against James's jaw and James sighed, a silent breath between just-parted lips. "Please, my lord."

"My beautiful boy." Thomas's arms squeezed around him, tight. Holding him. "There's nothing I'd deny you."

That was a lie. Thomas would wrestle from him that deeply-held self-hatred and never give it back. Steal all the hurtful words James thought should describe himself and throw them into the fire.

He held onto James for long moments more, letting James's abused muscles stretch and loosen. Left off tormenting James's cock to wrap both arms around James's chest and middle, taking as much weight as James would give him. Let him rest. It was almost unbearable to Thomas, this tenderness amidst the violence he had committed already tonight. His blood pounded in his ears, deafening. He wanted to lay James on his bed and make slow and careful love to him, kiss away all his hurts. Wanted to strike James to the floor and mount him there like some animal claiming its mate. To strip off all his clothes and press the cane into James's hand, begging to have his dignity stripped from him, too.

He waited. When James was ready, his eyes opened, and Thomas let him lay across the desk again. Then Thomas retrieved the belt from the chair where he had tossed it, and draped it across the highest curve of James's ass. There behind James, Thomas went to his knees.

"Thomas?" James asked. There was a note of uncertainty in his voice.

"Patience." He rested his hands on James's ass, fingers splayed. "Haven't I earned some enjoyment? I've taken such good care of you." He squeezed his hands, each finger digging into a bruise or welt, ten distinct points of renewed pain.

"Ah, _fuck_." James groaned and pressed his mouth into his forearm, muffling more sounds.

Thomas watched, fascinated, the motley of red and pink that grew and squirmed beneath his hands. He'd be splotched like a jaguar come morning, his scattering of freckles underlaid with dark bruises. James was so very pale here where where the sun never touched. Where _Thomas_ touched and looked his fill.

Every squeeze of his hands drew new sounds out of James, sighs and grunts all muffled. But not until he spread James's ass cheeks did he hear new tears fall. He ran his still-slick fingers across James's hole. The muscles of James's ass jumped like some captured insect in his hands. 

Thomas thought he might hear, in among the suppressed sobs, a broken _please_.

He rubbed his cheek against James's ass, against the hot, red welts he'd made. Hadn't shaved since morning, and though it took him a few days to be really hairy, his stubble must feel like sandpaper on skin so recently outraged. And still James pressed _toward_ him, urging Thomas to distress him more. 

Thomas gave off teasing and pressed his mouth roughly to James's skin. Tasted copper, from blood so close to the surface it tingled in his mouth. Let his teeth graze, exploring; when James's breath caught in a sharp whine Thomas sucked at that most tender spot, ensuring the bruise there would be shaped by his mouth. He moved on, seeking with tongue and lips and pitiless hands every place his lover was most vulnerable, until James at last moved him to compassion and he rasped his tongue across James's hole until it glistened wetly with his saliva. James squirmed and cried out, and Thomas realized he could make James come like this, just like this.

It was a heady feeling of power.

Surging to his feet, he drank in the sounds of James's needy gasping. Gorgeous, the writhing of his hips as as he strove to meet a mouth that was no longer there, to rut his cock against a cold wooden desk that would give him no relief. Thomas picked up the belt and looped it end-to-end, then brought the middle of it down across James's thighs. James keened as the leather snapped. This time, Thomas asked for no count. James would have no control, not even an idea of when the beating would end. 

So easy to hurt him like this. He was flayed open, every part of James plain to see. Here and now, James responded to the smallest affection and the most brutal stroke of the belt the same way. His whole body yearned for more.

With enough time and tenderness, Thomas could make him scream.

Now, though, Thomas beat him until he was _quiet_. One stroke flowed into the next, an endless cycle like the tide lapping at a rocky beach. Slowly, James's whimpers and gasps quieted. By the time Thomas was done, he had laid six lashes across James's lower body and another twenty across his back. Those twenty were nothing like pain, from what Thomas could see. At each meaty thud against his back, James relaxed more, grew calmer, until the desk held his whole weight and his breathing was slow, even, and deep.

And Thomas was so very hard.

He stood back, watching. In profile, James's face looked … peaceful. Not the horrible stillness it had been schooled to when James had first stripped down and stood here bare, submitting to Thomas's request only because he thought doing so would prove his point. When he had expected that Thomas would look at his ecstasy, would see him drinking in pain like sweet water from the cup of life, and be repulsed. What a fool James could be sometimes.

Thomas did not fool himself, to think he had driven those thoughts from James's mind forever. No matter. Even to give him this moment's peace was a victory. And, once he was healed, Thomas could always beat him again.

Gently, Thomas laid a hand on James's ass, stroking his thumb in slow sweeps down its middle, up and down.

"Shall I fuck you now, James?"

He counted the full-body shivers that went through James. One, then another, then another, like a heartbeat. James whimpered, face hidden, pushing back into Thomas's hand.

"You would like that, I think. You'd scarcely last. Even if I were gentle, every thrust would feel like the belt again. And you like the pain ... almost as much as you like being used." He let the pad of his thumb press against James's hole, not quite breaching him. Imagining how sweetly James would open for him if Thomas insisted. 

Wordless, James nodded, his hips pressing back. Begging for Thomas to insist.

Thomas asked, "You like that best of all, don't you? If you feel like you aren't being given a choice.

"If I fucked you, while you you laid there, and suffered, and accepted it because I told you that you must. So when you came all over my desk it would be. All. My. Fault."

James moaned, beyond words. Or perhaps, not wanting to say exactly those words.

Thomas's lip curled in a silent snarl.

"No, I don't think so, Lieutenant. I'm not in the mood to be _blamed_. Stay. Here."

Quickly, Thomas went into his dressing room and closed the door behind him, slumping against it. Breathing like he'd just run a mile. James wasn't the only one who longed for release.

Thomas pressed the heel of his hand against his cock, his breeches damp where its head strained against the oil-stained fabric. _Wait_. He banished as best he could the memory of the _sounds_ James had made, the little hiccups and grunts as his careful control broke apart. He looked around.

There. What he'd come for, stowed neatly beneath the dressing table in the corner. It was the short-legged stool that Peterson used when he made arcane adjustments to Thomas's shoes after they were already on Thomas's feet. Unvarnished wood, sanded smooth because Peterson would not risk snags in his breeches, but unpadded and, Thomas had always thought, surely uncomfortable.

Perfect.

Thomas snagged the stool and went back to James, who had pushed himself up on his arms, half-standing, but his head was bowed and Thomas thought his eyes must be closed. He leaned heavily against the desk, his legs shaking and his arms taking half his weight or more, the tendons standing out.

Gently, Thomas put the stool down behind him and took hold of James's shoulders, guiding him down. It was low enough that James knelt more than sat, his legs spread and his feet behind him. His weight, most of it, was centered where the cane had hurt the most.

James groaned, his eyes opening and closing, then opening again as he found there was no comfortable way for him to sit. Thomas stood in front of him and James looked up like a man drunk, his eyes unfocused, his lips parted, his crackling mind for once moving slow. When Thomas brushed his fingertips across James's lips, James turned his face to nuzzle into Thomas's palm, seeking out more touch.

All at once Thomas's self-control found its end and he fumbled with shaking hands at the buttons of his breeches. After a moment James batted his hands away and took over — even now James's hands were steady and clever. Before Thomas could even laugh at his lover's impatience, James had his breeches undone. 

James pulled his cock free and lapped at its head like a starving man given sweets.

Thomas's turn to groan. A shudder ran through him, James's eager tongue waking every nerve. So much of him had fallen into a trance, beating James, finding a rhythm. Watching his lover's hips rise and fall, hypnotic. Now Thomas's fingers and toes flexed. His balls drew tight against his body. Disembodied warm curled in him, as if James were inside him, fucking him. His nipples stood hard, sensitive even to the fine grain of his shirt.

James's hair was soft, and when Thomas sank his fingers into it, it felt like petting a friendly dog. Thomas pulled loose the last tie holding James's queue together, and ran both his hands through its full length, and then curled one hand into a fist and pulled James's head back, arching his neck and baring his throat.

Green eyes glinted like polished jade in the lamp-light. James's cheeks were flushed, his lips pink and wet with his own spit and fluid from Thomas's cock. Thomas hissed in air between his teeth, gut-struck by the man's sheer beauty. He took his own cock in hand, out of James's grasp.

"Hands down," Thomas said, then amended, "Behind your back."

Wordless, James watched him for a long moment. His eyes dropped to where Thomas's cock jutted dark red and wet from Thomas's hand, then raked slowly back up to meet his gaze. What thoughts he had, Thomas could not guess. But he licked his lips, and clasped his hands behind his back, and opened his mouth.

When Thomas slid the tip of his cock into James's mouth, onto his waiting, velvet tongue, they both moaned. James's eyes drifted closed, his long lashes gleaming red-gold with reflected light. 

Wet, hot, eagerly sucking, squirming tongue. Thomas moaned again, made _some_ noise in his throat, low, growling, appreciative. James had become so very good at this, so quickly. Weeks — months? No more than months, since the first time _Thomas_ had taken James into his mouth, and James had bucked and groaned and spilled as quickly as a virgin with his first lover. And then babbled apologies while Thomas wiped his mouth. He'd begged Thomas's forgiveness, sworn that he hadn't meant Thomas to believe he would want something so filthy, so _degrading_ , that Thomas was the best man he knew and James would never, _never_ ask to use him so — 

Thomas had kissed him to shut him up, and gotten James pinned beneath him on the bed, and spent a time explaining _just_ how he hoped James would see fit to use him, preferably soon and hopefully more than once. James's eyes had grown wide as saucers, and his cheeks had flared red, but his soft, still-wet cock had twitched against Thomas's thigh and he hadn't needed that much convincing at all.

Even the first time, James hadn't sucked cock like a virgin. Later, Thomas had wondered how it was that, if James had thought the act infamous and vile, he had practiced it before Thomas. There was no answer to that question that would make Thomas happy, he was certain, nor that James would be unashamed to tell, and so he hadn't asked.

Thomas gentled his hold on James, caressed the back of his head, and watched, fascinated, as his shaft slid a little ways through James's lips. In and out, no more than half an inch at once, as Thomas's body swayed. Wet, the skin glistening from James's mouth, James's lips wind-chapped and wrapped sweetly around Thomas's _cock_ , glorying in this act someone had once convinced him was fit only for whores and molly-boys —

If Thomas did nothing more of worth in his life, let it be marked on his gravestone that he had taught James McGraw to suck cock and love it.

"Can you take a little more?" Thomas asked. Even to himself, he sounded hoarse and soft. Awed.

He hooked a finger under James's lower lip and pulled against it. James's tongue pressed against his knuckle and his cock. Saliva ran down Thomas's finger, over James's chin. James moaned a complaint, and in response Thomas pressed deeper into his mouth, the head of his cock pushing into James's throat.

Choking, James pulled back, tears welling in the corners of his eyes. Before Thomas could sooth him, though, could do more than bite his own lip to hold back a curse, James swallowed and surged forward, and _swallowed_ , until his lips pressed against Thomas's hand where it held the base of his cock. And Thomas let go, and James took him deeper, took _all_ of him, and James _hummed_ with Thomas's cock down his throat. 

He had thought to caress James's head, to pet him and soothe him while feeding James his cock inch by slow inch. But James had turned the tables, had obeyed Thomas and clasped his hands behind him and then taken control regardless, and Thomas's legs trembled and he knew he was making noises, senseless and needy like a wounded animal. Thomas held James reverently in both hands and _fucked his mouth_.

All together, it took very little time after that for Thomas to go rigid and spill himself into James's throat, to pull back and spurt across his tongue, to watch his semen drip from James's mouth when it proved too much for him to swallow all at once. No surprise. Not when his orgasm had been building since he had come out of his dressing room with belt and cane in hand and James had been standing there, naked and golden, haloed by fire.

His heart had stopped, then. This little death was the inevitable result. 

James, licking his lips. Looking at Thomas's cock like he might want another taste.

Thomas knelt in front of James and for the first time in hours kissed him properly. It had been this afternoon, the last time Thomas had tasted his lover's mouth, far too long a time — when that mouth was so cunning and so willing, and his full, pink lips so often curled into an ironic smile. 

Now James's mouth was bitter, salted with Thomas's own fluids. Not a taste Thomas had ever loved, but on James's tongue it was delicious. Just this, James's mouth and its wet, hot depths, could sustain Thomas indefinitely. What need food or air? 

They held each other, he and James, cupped their hands around each other's heads as if either of them would pull away. The air between them was heavy and close, one inhaling as the other exhaled, as if life itself passed from Thomas's lungs to James, and James's to Thomas. 

If he could make them closer, he would — give James the breath from his lungs, the blood from his veins, his seed in James's belly, his love and adoration lodged in James's heart where shame and doubt now dwelt. _I am my beloved's, and my beloved is **mine**_. All his, for as long as Thomas could hold onto him. For as long as Thomas was worthy of him.

He grinned, fierce and resolute. If he could not cut pieces from his own flesh and give them to his love, he would simply hold to James, every day and every night, until the effect was the same. Until James saw himself as Thomas saw him, unbearably beautiful, honorable and good. Until James understood how ravenously Thomas hungered for him. How Thomas cherished knowing that hunger was returned.

When Thomas broke the kiss, James's eyes flew open, startled. But Thomas pressed their foreheads together as close as any kiss. "Shh," he soothed, and reached between their bodies to take James's neglected cock in hand, "shh, you've been so good for me, James. Let me take care of you."

James rocked against him, little ineffectual movements of his hips that did more to rub him against the stool than into Thomas's hand. Perhaps that was the point. Thomas stroked him, languid and lingering, while the unyielding wood refreshed his pain.

The fight had gone out of him — or, no, Thomas did not doubt James would be on his feet in an instant, saber in hand, were a _fight_ to break out. But the resistance to taking pleasure from Thomas's hand was gone, even if just for the night. Thomas would count that a victory.

"You are so beautiful," Thomas told him, his words spaced out as he kissed James's cheek, his mouth, his shoulder. "I … God, James. You're so beautiful."

James made a low noise — not a moan, not something Thomas knew a word for. But his hand covered Thomas's, squeezed to tighten Thomas's hold on his cock, urged Thomas faster. And when he climaxed, it was with little more than a sigh. He slumped against Thomas, his face wet against Thomas's neck. Thomas's hand, dripping wet with James's seed.

If he could cut off part of himself now, and give it to James as surety of his devotion —

Only let James name the pound of flesh he would take.

Nearly all James's weight was on him, now. Thomas nuzzled against his neck. "Was it good?" Thomas asked. He himself could not imagine feeling less than satisfied just now. But James was a different person.

Still, James hummed, "Mm-hm." And after a moment, he murmured, "Very good."

Thomas leaned back, taking more of James's weight into his arms. "Let me take you to bed. If we stay here, we'll cramp."

"Yes, m'lord." Slurring, but not like drunkenness. His vowels were growing broader, shoving the consonants closer together as vowels took up all their space. It sounded almost familiar, like … After a moment, Thomas placed the accent. It belonged to the new hall boy, Jory. Peterson's nephew, twelve years old and not three months out of the West Country.

Thomas barely stopped himself from laughing. He had never heard James sound like anything less than the perfect schoolboy, not even when he was cursing up a storm at politics, the _Gazette_ , or Thomas's own intransigence. No matter how much it delighted him he _must_ not laugh, for James would surely think it mockery and stop speaking entirely. And Thomas could not bear to lose these few minutes when he might hear James stripped bare of one of his disguises. There was a man down there somewhere, beneath all the layers he wore to meet others' expectations, and Thomas was beginning to learn his shape.

Thomas rose and took James with him, steadying him until he was sure of James's legs. James kicked the stool away; Thomas winced, but in fairness he owed Peterson a new one. Perhaps that one could stay near his bed for later use.

Once James was laid down beneath the covers, Thomas asked, "Will you take a little laudanum?"

"Not yet. I'll fall asleep."

Thomas looked him over: the sleepy sprawl, the corded muscles lax. "That seems inevitable." 

"Mm," James said, but didn't mount an argument.

Thomas put out the lamps, a circuit around the room, and stooped to bank the fire. It was not very cold out, but he thought James might like the warmth come morning. Then he measured out fifteen drops of laudanum and mixed it with a spoonful of sugar and a good jigger of brandy, and took it to bed with him. 

He set the cup of laudanum on his bedside table where a still-lit lamp, his Bible, and half a dozen other books lay, then stripped down to his shirt and climbed into bed. He laid there himself, quiet, for moments he did not bother to count.

Then, "James …"

In the uncertain light, he stretched his hand into the shadow beyond his body, and another strong hand covered it. Callouses from line and sword pressed their own marks into his skin.

He said, soft but urgent, "I love you so much it sometimes feels like pain. I hear your voice in the hall and I am like a hound, waiting. You walk into the room and I don't know what to do, how to hold myself, because surely everyone must see me bending toward you, like a tree kept indoors bends toward the light."

Thomas paused, taking a deep breath. From James's side of the bed, there was no sound. Only a pressure on his hand, and a steady, sleepy presence. Thomas reached farther, found James's jaw and tracked along it until he could cup his lover's cheek, and James's pulse laid beneath his fingertips.

"I'll gladly beat you, a thousand times if it pleases you. God, you suffer so beautifully." He paused, his body remembering. Lovely beyond words. 

"But I don't want to feel — to think, that I must fight you every time. If I must play that I am forcing you — I want to know it's only play." 

It seemed such a petty thing to ask, when James had already given him so much. Surely Thomas ought to _know_ , if he were in such perfect sympathy with James as he liked to pretend. If his love meant what it ought to mean.

But James said none of that. Instead, "I can't promise …"

He sighed, and he laid his hand across Thomas's again, holding Thomas's palm to his lips. Given his druthers, James would not sleep on his stomach like this, but Thomas tonight had left him very few options. His voice was still blurred, vowels still broad, and Thomas could not tell if it was the twin pressures of the pillow and Thomas's own hand distorting his speech or something more primal, reaching into his past.

"It's never been right, for me to want the things I want."

Thomas's heart ached, what parts of had not died tonight in James's mouth.

Even had he wanted to, Thomas could not pull away. James's hand was so strong, anchoring him. Softly, "And you act as if there's no shame in any of it. You ask me things, you _say_ such things, and when I try to answer I feel the words turn to ashes in my mouth."

His eyes adjusted to the dark, and Thomas could see more details of James's face. His eyes were squinched shut. Beneath Thomas's hand, his mouth moved, but no words emerged. After a while, James tried again.

And said, "I can't always _know_."

He looked at Thomas then, his eyes suddenly incandescent: the flame behind Thomas's shoulder, catching them amongst the shadows. "I promise, if it's ever not in play, I'll knock you on your arse." James smiled, nearly a real smile, and pressed a kiss into Thomas's palm.

Thomas laughed at that, and held him, and somewhere in the laughter he shed a few tears of his own. But after a while James took the sweet mouthful of laudanum, and Thomas stayed awake only long enough to see that he slept.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's curtain fic from here on down, folks.

It was abominably early when Thomas woke to the sounds of James getting out of bed and finding the pot. He lay there quietly, waiting for James to come back. If he didn't open his eyes, he wouldn't be forced to see how near it still was to dawn, so he lay in darkness, abstaining from daylight.

And heard James moving around, gathering things up. 

He opened his eyes. Grey light dripped in through a part in the window-curtains — _just_ gone dawn, then. The sun was no more eager to get up than Thomas was.

Thomas blinked owlishly across the room at James. "What are you doing?"

"Getting dressed."

"Yes, I can see that," Thomas grumbled. "Why on earth are you doing it?"

James was turned away from him, but his tone was clear enough. It was the same tone he used when he thought Thomas was being obtuse. "It's morning. I've slept in. There's work to do."

Well, now Thomas was awake. God damn it. He sat up in bed, dragging a hand through his hair and grimacing. He'd sweated last night and it had dried spiky as a hedgehog.

"James," he said, though he had to pause to yawn. "James, I distinctly remember beating your backside black and blue last night."

In fact, even in the half-light he could see James was moving stiffly, favoring one leg. 

But James, of course, told him, "I can work through worse than this." 

His boots were beneath the bed on Thomas's side — Thomas couldn't quite remember how they'd ended up there. James bent to retrieve them, and it took him two tries. Thomas heard him suppress a grunt.

"I know you can," Thomas said, and before James could move away Thomas caught his arm. "But this time you need not." 

James had his uniform in hand, or at least most of it. Thomas tugged him toward the bed.

"Look, you'd planned to spend today with me regardless, yes? Well, I intend to spend the next several hours here in bed, so you might as well stay." He blinked a bit of sleep-grit out of his eyes and looked up at James, hoping the spaniel puppy look would work in the dimness. "I'll stay here til nightfall just to be difficult if you refuse. You know I will."

Sighing, James put his clothes back on the floor and shoved them under the bed, out of the way. Thomas held back the covers, inviting James in — quickly, because the fire had died down in the night and it was a clammy, cold morning after all. James crawled awkwardly into the bed, into Thomas's arms.

Excellent.

He lay back, relishing James's weight on him, James's head pillowed on his breast. James's hair, too, had gone wild in the night, and red-gold strands of it tickled Thomas's mouth. Absently, he smoothed James's hair back, no real plan for ordering it. Just letting his fingers drift, following its fine texture to the tips.

"How painful is it?" Thomas asked, after James shifted against him again. Curling into his touch, yes, but also wriggling to take pressure off his hip. That was — pleasantly distracting, James squirming against him.

James said ruefully, settling again, "It's memorable."

Carefully, Thomas stroked his back, sticking to places he hadn't hit, or at least not very hard. "May I see?"

"I recall you looking quite closely," mumbled against his shirt.

"Yes, but it's morning now. I'd like to see my handiwork in the daylight." And get a look at the damage, and what he could do to ameliorate it.

James sighed and pulled the covers up closer to his face, burrowing down. "In a bit."

Thomas hummed, content with the answer. 

But James continued to shift his weight and favor tender spots, even sprawled across Thomas as best Thomas could accommodate him. Thomas asked, "Will you have more laudanum?"

"No," James said immediately, and Thomas frowned. Though he couldn't possibly see Thomas's expression, James amended, "When I'm ready to sleep. Not now. I hate the clouded head it gives me."

"Some people consider that a benefit," Thomas pointed out. He didn't really want to argue; it was just a reflex. "Opium-eaters claim to experience great joy, when they remember how to speak."

James grunted, but his hand found Thomas's and squeezed it. "I prefer a different drug."

Words like that could give a man a swollen head. Or, well, another swollen head, when paired with James's thigh moving between his, and James's breath hot across his skin even through his shirt. But there was no urgency to the thought. He would very much like to make love to James later, slow and careful. Not to make up for what happened last night, but perhaps to complete it.

His blood has been roused last night. Frightening, to think about the magnitude of what he had done. 

It hadn't been simple play — Thomas the stern master; James the errant pupil, or midshipman. He had done _that_ , not hundreds of times, but at least dozens, with several different men, one or two of whom he even loved. But James had _needed_ it, not merely desired chastisement. And Thomas had — guessed, and prayed, and fumbled his way recklessly toward a solution. That it seemed to have _worked_ , that James was still here with him in the light of day, was a minor miracle.

He knew well enough James was not one of those poor wretches — their existence known to Thomas only through rumors, and, he thought, more often figments of pornography than real people — who could find pleasure _only_ through pain, submission, humiliation. Certainly James was quite happy to throw him over and bugger him senseless when Thomas was being difficult. When James had spoken of this — this secret, this source of shame, he had given Thomas a great gift. And he had given it in the full expectation that Thomas would reject it, reject _him_.

Perhaps he had wanted to be rejected. The anticipation of a thing could be a greater terror than the thing itself. If he had thought himself so thoroughly tainted by his desires, if he had expected Thomas to find his history disgusting, then best to get it over with. Lay everything out plain, like a confession at the gallows. Not to stop the execution, but to let it proceed cleanly.

James had never said, but Thomas thought he might never have been in love before. Or never have had his love returned, baffling as that was. There were hard men and stupid men in this world, Thomas accepted, but how _any_ man could feel the intensity of James's love turned on him and not wish to bathe in it, to hold James to his breast and glory in that earthly reflection of the divine, Thomas would never understand. Even men who would not go so far as sodomy — Thomas well knew that love could exist without sex, just as sex so often did without love. What a wealthy man Thomas was now, to be blessed with an abundance of both.

This gift that James had given him, though. Thomas had not been prepared. Perhaps could not have been. Having a heart so valiant as this handed into his keeping — what but religion could even have begun to ready him for so great a responsibility?

He imagined trying that thought out on the next would-be moral reformer who came to his salon. _I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ His only Son; and in the blessing He has given me: this perfect match, a man so steadfast and strong that with the strength he gives me I may change the world entire. And who needs me, who was sent to me, to show him that he is good and worthy of love._

_And who will merrily sodomize the living daylights out of me every chance we get._

He snorted at the image. If nothing else, Father would be happy. It would give him the excuse to lock Thomas up as a madman, as he had so often threatened.

No, this would be Thomas's private faith, and very well. He could love his Creator without reserve, but he had doubts aplenty about the Church. How many wars had been fought in Christendom, simply because one man said _Kneel, then pray_ while another said _Pray, then kneel_? Or said _I sign the Cross this way, and I hate my neighbor who does it differently_? Surely it was the Cross that was important, not the sign. Surely God had better things to do than give one man reason to hate another.

There were holy men in the Orient, the Mohammedans, who said Christ was a messenger of God but not God's own Son, and that other prophets had come after Him. This sat ill with Thomas, for it seemed to call into question the salvation bought upon the Cross — but he did like the other implication, that God's plan was still being revealed, had not been written all at once. 

Had the world not changed since Christ's day? Had it not changed in just this last century, this last _decade_? And it would change again, God willing, and some of it at Thomas's hand. Thomas's, and James's, who had spilled out his secret shame and fear so that Thomas might judge him foul, and who lay here now in Thomas's arms, still loved.

Staying in bed all day, as he had threatened, was becoming a serious temptation.

But something would have to be done about James, first. He shifted again, still uncomfortable. Thomas nudged him. "I think I have a solution."

James levered himself up on one elbow, looking at Thomas skeptically. "If this involves me getting out of bed again, now that you've maneuvered me back here —"

"No, but you have to let me up." Ideally, with an acknowledgement that Thomas was being martyred — martyred! — and bravely leaving his warm, soft bed with his warm, not at all soft lover, in order to see to James's comfort.

It was not yet noon; it was not yet seven o'clock. Thomas was allowed to be stupid. 

James huffed and took his weight off Thomas, and Thomas gracelessly slid off the far side of the bed. His first stop was to the fire, to add fuel to it and prod life back from the embers. Then to find a robe and step into his dressing room, to ring for Peterson.

By the time he returned, carrying a small clay jar and a hand towel, James had taken over the precise middle of the bed. Was the man, in fact, half cat? It would explain more than one aspect of his personality.

Thomas kneed his way back onto the bed and put the jar and towel aside. After a moment contemplating his chances, he shrugged off the robe and pulled his shirt over his head; he knelt there naked. Better than to create yet another trial for poor Peterson to clean. 

James looked over his shoulder at Thomas; he raised an eyebrow to see Thomas naked. Thomas smirked at him. Perhaps Thomas wasn't the only one with hopes for later.

He opened the jar and the scent of rosemary filled the room. The salve inside was greasy and slightly green, unappealing to look at, but it smelled delicious.

"What's that?" James asked.

"I'm not sure. Peterson's mother makes it. We always keep some on hand." 

Primarily because Miranda's courses were painful, several months out of the year. It helped, she said, as much as laudanum and more than bedrest, for him to rub it into her back. Him specifically, because her maid had too soft a touch. And the maids used it, too, to massage into each other's hands when scrubbing or cold mornings made them sore.

Rosemary would always remind him of sitting with Miranda in her bed, reading to her to take her mind off the pain while she curled up against his side.

Gently, he pulled the covers off James's back and winced at what he saw. He'd known there would be bruising, but on James's pale skin the effect was magnified. An area bigger than his palm on either buttock was dark purple, the edges shading green. Other bruises, none so bad but ugly nonetheless, were in stripes across his thighs, wider than the cane itself had been.

Perhaps he _had_ been too harsh; perhaps when he had lost his temper, he had done worse damage than he thought — and James had meant to _work_ through this —

James's hand touched his knee, James curved around to reach him, and Thomas remembered himself. Work to do. He urged James to lay out flat again, then scooped some of the salve into his palm to warm it. It melted slightly when it was ready. 

Starting with the worst bruise, he began to rub it into James's skin. He paid attention to what was under his hands, because he didn't expect James to let pain show in his face. Tension — but slowly, it eased, so he seemed to be doing good work. He only just coated all the skin with salve, then moved down to James's thighs.

While he worked, he told James, "It's early for breakfast, but I asked for bread and chocolate." Then he frowned. "I'm sorry, I didn't think. Would you prefer coffee? It's what you usually drink."

James's eyes were closed, his head resting on a pillow wadded up between his arms. "Chocolate's fine," he said vaguely, and Thomas felt warm. He sounded relaxed again, like he had the night before. Not so far gone this time that he forgot his officer's persona and sounded like that West Country boy, but still slightly sleepy. Not from pain this time, but its surcease.

Thomas could bring him both those feelings.

"Could you spread your legs a little?" Thomas asked, then blushed. That was not what he meant. Well, not what he meant just _now_.

He thought he saw James's lips quirk, but James complied. It was easier for Thomas to wrap both hands around one thigh this way, and press his thumbs along the broadest part of the muscle, following it down. Pushing aside knots as he went, watching blood flow beneath the surface, around the bruise. Healing, he hoped. 

With the rosemary and the fat, and whatever other mysterious herbs went into Peterson's mother's brew, James was beginning to smell edible. Odd. Miranda never smelled quite like this, even with the same salve and the same firm, careful touch.

Perhaps he ought to feel guilty about that. For all that he could never make himself desire her the way he desired men, there was nothing he would intentionally deny his wife, his dearest friend. A few times, even, early in their marriage, he had _tried_ to be her lover, though he'd warned her in their courtship he wasn't certain he ever could — 

She'd been a virgin on their wedding night. Thomas hated that he'd disappointed her.

James had not been a virgin, far from it. But in a way, untouched by real love, he had been. Perhaps this was a way for Thomas to balance out his failings. If he could not be a good husband to one beloved, perhaps to another.

Not that he and James were married. Though if James were a woman — well, no, Thomas was married already, and even were bigamy not an issue, at best it would only replicate the situation with Miranda.

If _Thomas_ were a woman …

No, same problem, and besides, James couldn't afford him. 

It was a stupid thought, and Thomas didn't know where it had come from.

Regardless, Thomas was happy and God's mercy was abundant. Perhaps He would send someone to Miranda, to make her as happy as Thomas. Surely she deserved it just as much.

While he he stroked James's skin, his mind wandered. It didn't require much thinking, for his fingers to follow James's thickset muscles and find where they were knotted; the gradations of heat beneath his fingertips told him where the flesh was too outraged to push hard. So he thought, and eventually he spoke aloud.

"I wish I could've met you then," he said. "When you were still a midshipman. Before you became my Lieutenant." He breathed in deep, imagining it. If men who hadn't even known James or cared for his sharp mind had named him _pretty_ — Thomas would not have stood a chance against him.

"I would've been, hm, sixteen?" Was it really that long ago? Until this moment, Thomas would've sworn he had never felt old.

No matter. There was a more important fact in evidence. He confided to James, "I would have fallen in love with you at first sight."

James asked, muffled against his pillow, "Would you?"

Silly question.

"Mm. You wouldn't have liked me much, though. I was callow. I fell in love every other week." He sighed, remembering, "Once, it was with a vicar."

His own muscles loosed as he stroked up and down James's body. He returned now to James's ass, where the salve had had a chance to soak in. Cautious, he sat back on his heels, keeping all his weight off his lover. James had not seemed tender on his legs, but here he must be. Thomas let his hands rest there, spanning where he had slapped and bitten last night, letting warmth sink into the bruises from his palms.

After a moment, James raised his head. "Did you and the vicar ever —"

"Good Lord, no! I'm not entirely sure the man knew what sodomy was. I merely sighed my way through services. He had such a lovely voice." 

Lovely in speech, lovely in song. Deep and melodious. Thomas was quite certain he'd taken the Epistles the wrong way, hearing that man read them.

James seemed comfortable, propped on his elbows, looking over his shoulder at Thomas. He asked, his tone curious, "And now? Do you still fall in love at first sight?"

Thomas shook his head. "Oh, no, I'm much more mature. It took me — at least three days. Maybe four. When did we first have breakfast together?"

"Four days," James said. His eyes were on Thomas's mouth. 

Ah, right. "Yes. And you made this little," he quirked his lips, demonstrating what wasn't quite a smile, but wasn't cruel enough to be a smirk, "when I said something particularly daft. And I realized I could be quite happy seeing you smile every day of my life."

Seeing him crisply dressed and standing upright, going about the business of the navy. Undressed, gloriously so, sprawled across Thomas's bed. A disheveled mess halfway between, intensely erotic, all the evidence of how Thomas had disordered him plain.

Sleeping, deep and untroubled, in a home they'd made together.

His hands were wandering, undirected across James's back where the belt had left no bruises, when a discreet knock came at the door. Thomas wiped his hands on the towel he'd brought and got out of bed again. He pulled on the robe again to spare Peterson's blushes, but his valet was gone by the time Thomas got there, the tray left tactfully on a table by the door.

He carried it back to bed, quite proud to not have it slosh. Not that Thomas was clumsy, but the effortless grace with which servants could carry even the most overfull platter or pot always astonished him. 

James had resettled himself on his side, a bolster of pillows curving at his back. Thomas put the tray down between them and sat tailor-fashion, his right knee a few inches from James's legs.

James frowned at the tray. "You asked for two cups?"

A pot of chocolate and two Delft cups to pour it into. Thick slices of the bread he'd asked for, and some pale yellow butter and Cook's bitter-sweet marmalade. Inevitably, there was more than he'd requested — raising the silver lid from the serving dish, he found cold slices of last night's beef, with a ramekin of sharp, creamy horseradish sauce and a salad of tender lettuces.

But James looked displeased.

"Lieutenant …" Thomas sighed. Shrugged. There was nothing really to say. "No man is a hero to his valet."

"If he gossips?"

"He won't."

"If he's paid?"

"It had best be enough to keep him for the rest of his life, because I'll certainly make sure he never works again."

All that work Thomas had done to relax him, and now James was tense again, looking close to anger. Thomas had no ill will toward Peterson and trusted his discretion. But he'd carry out his promise in a heartbeat, if the man so much as breathed a word that substantiated James's fears. 

Thomas reached over, took James's ankle in his hand, squeezing gently. "Trust me, my love. Your safety is paramount. I am master here, and Miranda is mistress, and we both love you very well. No member of my household will betray you."

James had never yet called him a liar, and it seemed today would not be the day. James said nothing, and glowered at the tray, but he picked up a piece of bread and folded a slice of beef in it, with horseradish slathered on. Gratified, Thomas poured the thick hot chocolate for them both, and coated a slice of bread for himself in butter and marmalade. 

The warm smells of food, sweet and savory, and the healing rosemary that clung to his hands and his lover, and the quiet sounds of eating, were tranquil. Thomas grew introspective again.

He felt — drained. Not listless or weary, but like a rain-gorged river that had reached the sea just in time, emptying harmlessly the waters that would else have been a flood. Last night's intensity had not arisen all at once. Those tensions that had come out — his temper, when it frayed — when he had lashed at James harder than he'd meant to, and roared his demands that James make him _stop_ —

It had not simply been because James had aroused him, nor was it only his anger at James's buggering old captain.

He broke off little pieces of the bread, nibbling at them slowly. Seldom was his appetite awake this early, and his stomach was uncertain about accepting food. Evidently James lived at a different pace, for he was eating a second piece of beef with gusto, this time with lettuce folded in it.

"James …"

James looked at him over the rim of his cup, his chocolate half-consumed. The Lieutenant was not much in love with sweets, Thomas had noticed, but the spiced, Parisian-style chocolate thick with cream was difficult to dislike.

"Thank you. For staying. I know you would rather have gone out."

 _To avoid falling into a habit,_ James had said, when first they had begun this thing between them. Not to act as if it were safe for James to stay, lest either of them forget they had not the freedom to do as they pleased. It was why James had slept only a few nights in Thomas's bed, and Thomas only once in James's. Ironic, that they must keep their love to shadows, but could so seldom take advantage of the night.

Thomas wiped crumbs from his fingers onto a serviette. He said to James, "I need you to know that you frighten me."

No; that wasn't what he'd meant, and now James looked alarmed —

Thomas spoke quickly, not caring if he sounded like a fool. "I've been in love before. A few of those men I love still; there's no limit to how long one may treasure a memory. There's always a giddiness to it at first — just like falling. With you, I expected I would feel that way, and I did for a little while. But this isn't ..."

Shaking his head, he looked at James, hoping James would understand. That James would _entirely_ understand. 

"It's never felt like this." He shrugged.

That was all there was to it. Love, he knew. Sexual desire, he knew very well. Even the wish to make a life with someone, to grow old beside them, to have children if God willed it — thanks to Miranda, he knew that feeling, too.

But never all at once.

He was used to being in control. A rich man, an earl's heir, educated and well-connected; Thomas was not accustomed to being at anyone else's mercy.

But here and now, his future — it was not just his alone. And Thomas was not entirely sure what to do about that.

James — 

Those bruises were terrible. The pain, without laudanum to dim it, must be sharp. Neither fact stopped James from sitting up directly, pulling Thomas to him by the back of the neck, and kissing Thomas breathless, the pungent taste of horseradish on his tongue.

"Stop thinking," James said. There was barely enough room between their mouths to speak; his teeth grazed Thomas's lower lip by chance. And then a second time, with intent. 

Bite. 

Not hard enough to draw blood. Just hard enough to hurt. Thomas hissed and grabbed his lover by the shoulders, pressed their mouths together, forced his tongue between James's lips. 

James met him strength for strength, the kiss a contest, their tongues striving against each other in rough strokes that may as well have been against his cock — they made him just as hard. From James's throaty growl, his experience was the same, and Thomas was growing dizzy. Lust, or lack of air. Maybe both.

And then James's hand in his hair, Thomas's head wrenched back. Gasping. His mouth open, lips bite-swollen and wet. James's eyes boring into him, sea-green and dark. James smiled, his teeth bared. He stroked Thomas's face roughly, and Thomas's vulnerable throat.

His voice was deep and low, dark as his eyes. Full of promise. "It would do you well to remember, my lord: you aren't the only one accustomed to being obeyed."

Breathless, Thomas laughed. He licked his lips and watched James's eyes follow the tip of his tongue.

"Then what are your _orders_ , Lieutenant?" he asked. Challenging.

James's hand in his hair tightened, _almost_ too much; for just a heartbeat it was real pain, and then James let him go. Leaned back against the pillows, looking like a lord at ease. 

He waved a hand at the denuded breakfast tray. "Get that out of the way, and get me the god damned oil."

By the barest thread, Thomas held onto his dignity — he did not _leap_ out of bed. He took the tray to his writing desk, that old stalwart, and left his robe beside it. They hadn't managed to break or spill the oil bottle last night, so he retrieved it and returned to the bed where James still lounged.

James had Thomas's shirt in his hands and a speculative look in his eyes. Thomas climbed back onto the mattress, and James —

"James!" 

— _ripped the sleeve_ from Thomas's shirt.

James rolled his eyes. "I'll sew it back for you."

He rolled to his knees, took the stoppered bottle from Thomas's hand, and shoved Thomas backwards, onto the crumpled blankets. 

Thomas caught himself on his elbows, still indignant. James knelt over him, pulling the sleeve-length of fabric straight between his hands. "Do you know how many scarves I own?" Thomas demanded.

"And yet, none in reach. Your failure to think ahead is not my problem." James seized Thomas's nearer wrist and pulled his arm up, throwing him off-balance. His shoulders hit the mattress. 

Glowering, Thomas raised his arms above his head, crossed at the wrist. James wrapped the sleeve around them, an efficient binding. Tight. "I was wearing a robe. You could have used the sash."

"Do I need something for your _mouth_?" James inquired. 

There wasn't enough fabric to tie him to the bedpost. For a moment Thomas expected James to shred the rest of his shirt for it, but it seemed his martinet lover was satisfied with just the makeshift shackle. 

Peterson was going to have to learn to live with Thomas storing scarves in his bedroom.

And then Thomas ceased to care about his wardrobe, or his valet, or whether the sun would rise tomorrow, because James had poured oil into his palms and took Thomas's prick in his rough, beautiful, irresistible hands. All at once, overpowering, and Thomas said something, probably quite blasphemous. He didn't care. His hips jerked, an involuntary reflex, thrusting his prick into that tight grip. And got James's hand on his hip for his trouble, holding him down, and still James's fist jerked Thomas's cock to fullness with brutal efficiency.

Eyes squeezed shut, Thomas held onto the bedpost as best he could with his bound hands, arched his back, tried to catch his breath. 

" _Jesus_ , James, if you want me to be good for anything — James, I'm going to come —"

"No, you aren't," James said with calm conviction.

The _sounds_ his hand made, wet and squelching, were utterly obscene. Nearly as filthy as the sounds Thomas made, all unbidden, whimpers escaping though he bit his lip to keep them in.

And then James _stopped_. All at once. The red-headed stone-hearted _bastard_ took his hands off Thomas entirely. Left Thomas thrusting against air, the leading edge of orgasm rolling across him, stopping, retreating.

Fortunately, James ignored what Thomas said to him just then. And touched Thomas again, straddled him, powerful thighs bracketing Thomas at the waist, James's hand grasping his cock again. Guiding, to James's hole. And as soon as the head of his prick pressed against the muscle there James bore down. Thomas groaned like a victim under torture — and James kept moving, relentless, little hitching movements of his hips working him down Thomas's cock. 

This had been the first confession. The very first forbidden thing James had asked of Thomas. He loved being fucked by Thomas. Being fucked by _any_ man, as long as his cock was pleasing. Shameful, degrading, courting death by hanging. Painful but addictive.

When James had spoken of the act as painful, and asked for it anyway, that really ought to have been Thomas's first clue. Instead Thomas had given all his attention to going slowly, opening James, treating him like something fragile and precious. Showing him pain did not have to be pleasure's price.

James now, impaling himself on Thomas's cock, ecstasy on his face. Biting his lip til the skin between his teeth went white, in pleasure, maybe in pain. Thomas had explained to him that done right it should not hurt, for Thomas it _did not_ hurt, and now James claimed it didn't hurt when Thomas penetrated him, but Thomas was never sure. Would James tell him, if it did?

Was it a problem, if it still hurt, and James liked that it hurt?

James seated himself on Thomas, hot, tight, gripping Thomas's entire length. All that violent power, the strength James used to tame the sea and cast down his enemies, holding Thomas. Yielding to Thomas. Grinding down against Thomas, his bruised ass hot on Thomas's thighs, his hips trembling.

Thomas raised his hands, bound as they were, to cup at James's face. And James nuzzled into them, kissed his fingers. Held Thomas's wrists like Thomas was the only steady thing in his world, and began to ride. 

The mattress groaned beneath them. 

Thomas was his, all his, for minutes or hours, the pulsating vice that was James's body squeezing hard around him, Thomas's cock held so deep he could feel James's heartbeat, like the two of them shared one blood. The staccato sounds James made, harsh where they caught in his throat — his instincts still demanded _quiet_ and _secret_ but his passion fought through that guarded stockade. And the look on James's face, awed, _transported_ , his mouth hanging open and his eyes half-closed, hooded gaze seeing something Thomas's mirror would not show — it was too much, all at once, and Thomas shuddered violently and spilled within him. James's weight was barely enough to keep the thrashing of Thomas's body in check.

And James followed, like that had been permission. James's seed spilled on his chest and stomach; Thomas's, inside James, slick and hot. 

Later, James in his arms, both of them sticky, neither caring, Thomas smiled a silent, secret smile. James, he was almost certain, had fallen asleep.

This was the knack of chess: to construct a menu of options for your opponent, and turn by turn to remove those options until he had no choice but to play into your trap. It was not Thomas's way. To educate and persuade, to show your opponent that what you wanted was right after all, seemed to him a better victory.

Thomas never played chess to win at chess. And the games he played, he won.


End file.
